The Witching Hour

Book 17: Dandy Gilver

by Catriona McPherson

Genres: Cozy Mystery; Historical Mysteries; Private Investigators

Synopsis

♥️ ' . . . an absolute delight . . . these are the perfect reads for a night by the fire' ♥️ Scotsman

War is hovering on the horizon, and Dandy Gilver wants nothing more than to keep her friends and family close. But then a call in the night places her oldest friend Daisy at the centre of a murder investigation. With her friend's future on the line, Dandy and her fellow sleuth Alec Osbourne must race to prove her innocence.

But when they reach the idyllic Scottish village of Dirleton, residents confirm a woman was seen at the crime scene - an ancient stone called the louping stane, still spattered with the victim's blood. And the longer the detectives spend in the village the more they question Daisy's involvement. They're not getting the answers they need, but are they asking the right questions? . . .

Release date: September 3, 2024

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 320

Sample

Prologue

The kirk in the village of Dirleton has no clock in its tower, and so there is no chime from above to accompany the earthy crack below when fragile skull meets solid rock. Nevertheless, the hour does strike on sundry other timepieces all around the village green and the lanes leading off it: an antique grandfather clock at the turn on a stone staircase; a grandmother clock above a Scotch dresser in a cosy dining room; a polished-gilt carriage clock under its dome in a back parlour; a large, plain wall clock behind a bar, meant to stop all arguments about last orders; a pretty, coloured clock, rumoured to be Limoges, sitting on a cottage chimney piece; a kitchen clock, sooty from the range below, fat and comforting like its reassuring tick; and a folding travel alarm, so small as to be inconvenient for any but a lady’s fingers to wind, which takes up the corner of a writing desk. The strokes, whether marked by a solemn, deep gong or the tinniest little ring, echo it all almost perfectly: the shout, the trip, the gasp, the stumble, the stagger, the drop, the dull crack of bone, the helpless groan, the spasm of limbs, the final settling and, then, as the last note fades from all the clocks, the stillness.

Nowhere is more still than a village at night. Woods and moors have creatures abroad on their nocturnal round. Cities and towns are a-bustle with light and sound. But a village – a blameless, orderly, settled village such as Dirleton – is a portrait of peace. Nothing will disturb that peace till morning. Nothing will stir, once those who were watching have made themselves sure that life is extinguished and have done what they need to do.

 

Chapter 1

Saturday, 13 May 1939

If Nanny Palmer could see me she would rap my knuckles with a hairbrush and send me straight to bed: she drilled me in posture, in table manners, in attentiveness to guests, and currently I was lolling like a rag doll in my dining chair, full to my clavicles with the first four courses of dinner and barely even pretending to listen to what my neighbour was saying. We were out of the habit of entertaining on this scale at Gilverton, truth be told, and I had dug into clear soup, poached fish, a terrine of pigeon and a sorbet, quite forgetting that there was still roasted meat, salad, pudding and cheese to go.

So I would have gone off to bed gratefully enough had Nanny sent me, throbbing knuckles or no, but there was no chance of escape tonight. It was Hugh’s birthday, his sixtieth birthday to boot, and the entire Gilver family was determined to make it a gala occasion. I had gathered all of his dearest friends, with no thought for myself about whether they had wives to bring or if such wives as they did have were much of a treat. I had also let our cook, Mrs Tilling, wander off into the by-ways of Hugh’s Victorian childhood and Edwardian youth as regards the menu, to wit the pigeons, and the suet still to come.

Moreover, I had lifted the blanket ban on war talk at the table. For one thing, it was pointless to expect the men to speak of anything else, since most of these friendships had been born in the army and stiffened to their current state either in Africa or in the Great War itself. Besides, for months now Hugh’s conversational menu had consisted solely of news about Europe and predictions arising therefrom and was replaced by brooding silence when said news and predictions were vetoed by me. Brooding silences at a dinner party were not to be countenanced, and so for his birthday I had relented, even though as a result I had had to listen first to Major Someone on my left regaling me with anecdotes about Spion Kop and then to Colonel Someone Else on my right drooling over Spain’s recent antics as only a childless bachelor, himself too old to fight, could do.

‘Difficult month, May,’ he said, poking the gooseberry ice as he had just poked the terrine. Such was my desire to turn away from Franco, I fell on this gambit like a shipwrecked sailor washing up on an island in a storm, feeling none of my usual disdain for anyone ill-mannered enough to remark on the food at another’s table, beyond a murmur of ‘how delicious’ for form’s sake. I launched into winter savoury, summer chicory, ducks stowed in the icehouse and even Gilverton’s new electrical refrigerator, not caring that within moments he glazed over with a depth of boredom equal to mine from five minutes before.

Alec Osborne, on the other side of the table, caught my eye and twinkled at me, causing me immediately to finish my point and ask the colonel about barrack rations. Whereupon Alec, who knows me so well after seventeen years of detecting together, only twinkled more and leaned in close to Daisy Esslemont, his own neighbour, to whisper about me. Daisy smirked and shot me a look that was unchanged from the looks she used to shoot me across gallery floors in Paris while we were both at finishing school, whenever she manoeuvred Mademoiselle into expounding on the artistic merits of some fleshy nude in oils or rippling marble god.

I was happy to see her smiling. The only disappointment of the entire day was that her husband Silas was missing the party owing to a prior and unbreakable engagement. Daisy had been uncharacteristically sour about it when she had arrived alone.

‘Such nonsense,’ she had said, sitting at my dressing table and inspecting her face with a critical gaze. ‘Regimental dinner, my eye. How long have he and Hugh been pals, Dandy?’

‘Since short trousers and midnight feasts at Kingoldrum,’ I said, leaning over her to

dab at my hair with a brush, trying to fluff it up a bit and reduce the oil-slick effect my maid’s attentions had produced. ‘But Hugh doesn’t mind. If it was the Black Watch instead of the Atholl Highlanders, he’d be there himself.’

‘And we could have kedgeree on our laps in your sitting room, watching the babies roll about,’ said Daisy.

‘Hardly babies now,’ I said. ‘They pelt around like clockwork motor cars. Lavinia got herself stuck in that old apple tree in the corner of the cutting garden yesterday. Terrifyingly high up. The garden boy had to fetch a stepladder.’

‘I still can’t believe you’re a grandmother,’ said Daisy, opening her mouth in a silent scream to paint it.

Nor could I. Donald, my elder son, had married very young and set right to it, presenting us with a pair of sturdy twins before the year was out. And Mallory was pregnant again right now. A year ago, I might have raised an eyebrow: she had proved herself all but incapable of dealing with two infants and the memory of Lavinia and Edward’s early days was not one I expected soon to fade. Now, clutching at straws somewhat, I consoled myself with the thought that if conscription came, as Hugh said it must, there was a slight chance that single men would go first, that married men without children might be taken before fathers and even that fathers of three – or four, if Mallory’s size was a reliable indicator – might be called up before fathers of two. In fact, it could all be over before Donald’s name came to the head of the list. If it started. I was still clinging to “if”, as were all mothers throughout the land.

‘Throughout the continent, I daresay,’ Alec had tried to claim once in quite the bitterest fight we had ever had. ‘In Germany and Italy just the same.’

‘Then they shouldn’t have voted for monsters,’ I shot back.

‘I don’t suppose all of them did,’ Alec said. ‘The Italian election was a travesty. And the boys who’ll fight on the German side weren’t of age when—’

‘I can’t listen,’ I told him.

‘What is it you say in these parts, Dandy? We’re all Jock Tamson’s bairns?’

‘Sickening mawkishness,’ I said.

‘To remind ourselves that all of us are God’s children?’

‘I couldn’t care less about anyone’s “bairns” but my own at the moment. Really, Alec, I don’t argue with you about the trenches. How dare you argue with me about a mother’s feelings. Truly, how dare you have the gall.’

‘Madam?’ Grant, my maid, was in the room. I had not heard her enter and clearly had not heard more than one attempt to gain my attention either, for both she and Daisy were staring at me.

‘Grant,’ I said, starting and dropping the hairbrush.

‘The others are starting to arrive,’ she told me. ‘There’s a Mrs Keith in the hall, wearing a most peculiar garment. Becky tried to take it off her but it’s not a cloak after all. It’s a dress.’

‘A dress I want to see!’ said Daisy. ‘Come on, Dan.’

As we were leaving my bedroom, I noticed Grant straightening the dropped hairbrush. Such was the kindness with which we were all treating

 one another as the clouds gathered. I had messed up my hair and Grant herself had declined to scold me.

‘Weevils!’ said the colonel, finishing his story about army food.

I shuddered politely and drew breath to make a reply, but evidently this was a rich seam of anecdote and he had barely scraped at it. He was off again, regaling me with a competition he and his fellow officers had held once to “guess the game”. Another of the men joined in and together they relived happy days, recalling with a shout of laughter a time that the bottles of coffee essence and Worcestershire sauce got swapped by a native cook.

‘Made not a blind bit of difference!’ the colonel said, wheezing with mirth. ‘That antelope was as high as a kite. Take more than coffee to put a dent in it.’

I let my attention wander and the long meal wore on.

I did not then, or later, pay much heed to the table itself, for Pallister had done himself and me proud. The silver glittered and the flowers, hours into the evening, looked as dewy as the moment they were picked. He had pressed me into buying terrifically expensive candles too – really quite jaw-droppingly expensive – but he was right. They burned with steady pale ovals of flame and there was not a drip to be seen. He had been sour about Becky and a village girl instead of footmen, of course, but at least he offered the beef while Becky wrangled the gravy boat; and the girl managed the vegetables nicely as far as I could see.

As the salad was cleared, I found my eyes drawn to Teddy, my younger son, whom I had placed beside his invited house guest, a girl by the name of Dolly Cartaright. He had met her at a Christmas party in an unlikely district of London, where one of his school chums had a studio or a printing press or some such thing, and had started dropping her name into conversation at Easter, before coming to my sitting room, quite solemn and unlike himself, to ask if she might be included in tonight’s party.

‘Family and old friends though, darling,’ I had said.

‘Well …’ was all the reply he made, but I know my son and that was enough. I went straight to Hugh in his business room to pick over the news.

‘Cartaright?’ he said. ‘Not Cartwright?’

‘Nor Carter-Wright,’ I assured him. ‘Teddy wrote it down for me to address the envelope.’

‘What address?’

‘London,’ I told him. ‘A 3F, I’m afraid. A flat. But north of the river. It’s so hard to tell these days. She could be anyone.’

‘Dolly Cartaright,’ said Hugh. ‘She sounds like a barmaid.’

‘I don’t care if she is a barmaid,’ I said. ‘Or a chorus girl, or even a …’ My imagination ran out.

‘An artist’s model,’ said Hugh. ‘Like What’s-her-name.’

‘I think she was a muse,’ I reminded him. ‘Although that might be the same thing, now I consider it at a distance. She was very … limber.’

Hugh rewarded me with a snort of laughter.

‘And I mean it. I

don’t care. If she marries our son—’

‘If marriage isn’t too old-fashioned for her,’ Hugh chipped in.

‘And the call-up goes for single men first—’

‘It won’t or only very briefly.’

‘—then she could pull pints of beer in the Atholl Arms for all our friends and I’d drive down at closing time and offer a lift home.’

‘What friends of yours drink pints of beer in the Atholl Arms?’ Hugh asked me.

I rewarded him with a little snort of my own. ‘So I may invite her? To your birthday?’

‘I look forward to it,’ Hugh said. ‘Saves booking a clown.’

How wrong we both were. When Miss Cartaright turned up and was presented to us over tea in the library, she was revealed to be the daughter of a minor but respectable branch of perfectly good Shropshire family, whose widowed mother had married an American and not only taken his name herself but also bestowed it upon her child. Dolly was short for Dahlia, my own middle name, a coincidence that sparked an instant affinity, by way of shared suffering.

At the current moment, as the pudding plates were cleared, she had half her attention on Teddy, but not owing to complacency or indifference, I thought, after watching a moment or two. Rather, it seemed they were automatically attuned to one another like a pair of radio transmitters, or I might mean one transmitter and its receiver: aware without concentrating, hearing without listening, answering without speaking. They were, in short, clearly in love. As I say, though, she was a nice girl of the sort I understood and the other half of her attention was politely trained on the general conversation being batted around that end of the table, not quite like the beach ball we had all been taught to emulate, since the topic was the League of Nations, but not quite beyond the pale of what passed, this spring, for normality.

I was not the only one noticing. Hugh caught my eye and, without moving a muscle in either his brow or his cheeks, still managed to convey a shared thought with me. We had been married such a long time, I reflected, that I could interpret the various absences of expression without any trouble at all. Donald does not share his father’s poker face. He was waggling his brows and quirking his lips at me in a manner more suited to entertaining his toddlers than communing in public with his mother. I was glad when Mallory frowned at him across the cloth and thus persuaded him to check his exuberance a little. Her look to me was far more measured. She has an attractive way of pursing her lips that, while being the opposite of a smile, nevertheless manages to hint at smiling. She did it now. I smiled openly back at her, feeling a great surge of contentment suddenly. My husband was enjoying his party, my daughter-in-law was becoming a good friend, my prospective daughter-in-law looked as though she would slot into the family nicely, and my grandchildren were cosily ensconced in their father and uncle’s old nursery for

the night, out of earshot, making it no matter to me if an excess of cake at Grandpa’s birthday tea had left them too boisterous for sleep.

Then, as quickly as the wave of happiness rose, it drained and, as though I had turned the dial on a kaleidoscope, I saw my family in quite a different arrangement: my husband too old to fight, granted, and my grandson too young, my daughters-in-law a source of companionship and succour besides, but my sons, my boys, gone; as lost to me now as they would be hence, since the path we were all on led one way, straight down, with no turnings. I felt a sob begin to build under my ribcage and it took all of Nanny Palmer’s training to turn a visceral impulse to flee into something approaching conventional behaviour.

‘Shall we, ladies?’ I said, standing and dropping my napkin.

There was a moment of silence. Pallister, only just beginning to think about bringing the cheese in, stopped dead and frowned at me. All the gentlemen shot to their feet and got ready to help the women with their chairs. Daisy said, ‘You’ve turned over two pages at once, Dan,’ raising a titter. But Mallory, bless her, and Dolly too, bless her twice, dabbed their lips, rose smoothly and headed for the door.

Both Hugh and Alec followed my progress with concerned looks. Hugh’s brow cleared when I stopped behind his chair, put a hand on his shoulder and said, ‘Happy birthday, dear. And don’t think for a minute that starting early means you don’t get to finish late.’

Most of his chums met this evidence of wifely generosity with great good cheer, raising glasses to me and even murmuring praise. I heard a few ‘Splendid woman’s and ‘Lucky blighter’s and the like. Hugh placed his hand briefly on mine and patted it. Only Alec continued to watch me as I stalked away, and only Pallister spoke.

‘Madam?’ he said. ‘Shall I …?’

Poor Pallister. Apart from the village girl, tonight’s dinner was a quite a return to the good old days for him. He had been polishing and bullying since the day before yesterday. And now I had spoiled it.

‘Don’t undo Mrs Tilling’s lovely arrangements,’ I said. I had seen the rounds of Stilton and the pyramids of dusky figs and I knew that dismantling the platters to send half of the bounty to the drawing room would break her heart. ‘We’ll be fine with coffee and some bonbons,’ I assured him. ‘And no rush even for those.’

Then at last I made my escape and managed not to go into a cupboard to howl before I dragged myself to the waiting ladies.

‘Jolly good idea, I say,’ Daisy greeted me, as I slipped into the room. ‘I’m stuffed like a foie gras goose but I’m too greedy not to fall on nice cheese when I see it.’

‘Good Lord,’ I said. ‘Mrs Commander, Mrs Keith, ladies: Mrs Esslemont here is a very old friend and you must excuse her.’ Both the wives I addressed gave me tight smiles and turned to one another, apparently intending to speak tête-à-tête if there was such coarseness on offer in the wider company. For Daisy, I had to admit, was drunk. I regretted telling Pallister we could wait for coffee.

‘Girls,’ I said, joining Mallory and Dolly in a little grouping of chairs well away from the fire and the drinks tray. ‘Thank you. The war talk suddenly felt unbearable. Mallory dear, please tell Dolly she hasn’t fallen in with gypsies. I’m not usually so odd, I assure you.’

‘Mrs Gilver,’ said Dolly, pressing my hand between hers. ‘The night before last I ate scrambled eggs right out of the pan with a spoon. Standing up. I’ve been thinking about my nanny all night to try to remember my manners. Please don’t worry about me.’

I laughed and turned my hand to squeeze one of hers. ‘My dear girl,’ I said, ‘if I had a pound for every time Nanny Palmer floats into my head …’

‘Well then,’ said Mallory. ‘I’m not going to bother putting these back on.’ She rolled her long white evening gloves into a ball and threw them over the headrest of her chair, then wiped her hands together as though declaring a job well done. I chucked mine after hers and I have to say it felt marvellous.

‘I’ve left mine in the dining room,’ said Dolly. ‘They probably tumbled off my lap when I stood up. So I’m the gypsy if anyone is, wouldn’t you say?’

‘You are two very good girls,’ I said. ‘Now, I must go and look after Mrs Esslemont. She’s …’

‘Sauced,’ said Mallory. ‘It’s not like her. My goodness look at her, Dandy! She’s loosening her frock!’

Daisy was indeed grappling with the buttons down one side of her evening dress.

‘If I can keep my belt knotted in this state,’ Mallory said, patting the hummock at her middle, ‘then anyone can. Oh, look at the colonel’s wife! Talk about sucking lemons. What on earth’s going on? Do you know?’

I hastened to Daisy’s side to see if I could find out, leaving the girls giggling.

Of course, Pallister had ignored my permission to hold off on coffee and sweets and was already entering with an enormous silver tray, delicate china rattling since he moved rather more quickly than his usual stately glide. I guessed he wanted to get back to the dining room before Becky and her assistant could cause any havoc there. I gave him a grateful smile as I poured a cup for Daisy and bore down on where she was lolling on a chaise longue.

‘Budge up, you sot,’ I said. ‘What’s the matter with you?’

‘Ugh,’ she said, shifting to one end of the chaise so that at least her gaping buttons were hidden by the cushions. ‘What’s ever the matter, Dandy?’

I thought about this remark for a moment, while sipping at my own blistering cup of wicked black sobriety. (Ever since Mrs Tilling took up the habit herself she has become a reliable source of excellent coffee.) Daisy’s life was comfortable enough as far as I could see. She had three daughters – one just married, one engaged, and one still having fun – pots of money, an easily run house, and the kind of natural kindness and cheerfulness that meant she held on to her servants. There was really only one possible source of

trouble.

But she had been married to Silas for a long time and had made her peace with his habits years ago. He had never embarrassed her and no one – whether spurned lover, angry husband, or determined child – had ever knocked on her door. I was at a loss as to what he might have done to upset her so, beyond missing tonight’s party.

‘I told you already,’ I said to her, ‘Hugh doesn’t mind. And you’re far too good a friend of the house to feel awkward about turning up alone, aren’t you? It was a treat for Alec, apart from anything.’

‘I got five minutes of Alec and two hours of the major,’ Daisy said. ‘Do you happen to know what regiment he’s the major of, Dandy?’

‘The Black Watch, I assume,’ I said. ‘Isn’t that how he and Hugh know one another?’

‘It is not,’ Daisy said. ‘Ugh, this coffee is like tarmacadam. It’s flattened down all my lovely fuzz from the wine.’

‘That was rather the idea,’ I said. ‘And I’m going to get you another cup. Perhaps you could attend to your frock?’

‘What?’ said Daisy. Then: ‘Bloody hell!’ She sat up straight and, while not quite slapping her cheeks with her palms, she nevertheless managed to pound some manner of decency back into herself. She always had this talent. She could scramble back into our rooms in Paris and look sober enough to convince Mam’zell she had merely been outside to look at the stars.

Now, all these years later, she had had more practice, and turned aside to rearrange herself as I made for the coffee tray. The major’s wife, as it happened, was there for a top-up too.

‘Do help yourself to a bonbon,’ I said. ‘I must apologise for dragging you all away before the end of dinner. I hope you’re not still peckish.’

‘Not much chance of that,’ she said. ‘Delicious dinner, my dear. Quite a treat for us these days.’ She leaned in close. ‘Between you and me, I made sure to pack liver salts for Percy. Whenever he goes to a regimental dinner he comes home in quite some distress. Anno domini, he says. Getting old and losing form, as are we all.’

‘And what regiment is that?’ I said. It was rather a bald question but I could not think how to soften it. Besides, she was telling me about her husband’s stomach and it seemed that we must be beyond the need for pussyfooting. ‘Didn’t he serve with Hugh?’

‘Oh no, not the Watch,’ said Mrs Major. ‘It is the Watch for dear Hugh, isn’t it? I seem to recall so. Percy is an Atholl Highlander.’

‘But—’ I said, before I caught myself.

‘If Hugh said they “served” together,’ she went on, ‘he probably means on their tour. Europe, you know. Wild oats. Can-can dancers and what have you. A little joke. And all water under the bridge. Men will be boys.’ She laughed at her own little joke and even went so far as to repeat it. ‘Men will be boys indeed.’ Then she leaned in even closer and dropped her voice to barely a mutter. ‘You should perhaps help Daisy Esslemont to see it that way. 

Remind her of her many compensations.’

This remark would have mystified most people, but I thought I understood it. Silas had startled his friends and earned first their scorn and then their envy by starting up an insurance company of all things, years ago when the rest of us were still pretending we could live forever on our rents. Mrs Major evidently believed that a wife kept in furs and Paris fashions should not complain about even such renowned philanderings as those of Silas Esslemont.

I disagreed. I thought if Silas insisted on betraying his class by entering into business, he should be held to the morals of middle-class businessmen.

‘Poor Daisy,’ was all I said, however.

‘Hmph,’ said Mrs Major. ‘Percy had a tough row to hoe with her at dinner. I overheard some actual grilling, don’t you know? On the topic of … well, I’m not exactly sure what. The secrets of the officers’ mess or something.’

‘I shall take her more coffee and hope it helps,’ I said, excusing myself and returning to Daisy.

‘At least put some sugar in it,’ she said, after the first sip. ‘This is filthy stuff.’

‘It’s supposed to be,’ I said. ‘That’s the mark of good coffee. Like olives and whisky. Now look, Daisy dear. I had a word with his wife and I must say I think you’re being very silly. I’m quite sure that the major respects Silas and the rest of the regiment enormously, but he has been friends with Hugh since they were boys. You know what it’s like when you have two invitations for the same day. I toss coins.’

‘What are you talking about?’ said Daisy. ‘The major isn’t skipping the mess to toast Hugh. He told me all about the feast they had at the last Atholl Highlanders’ dinner, and it was a week and a half ago. While I was visiting my mother.’

‘I don’t—’ I said.

‘Which means wherever Silas is tonight, it is not where he said he was. He chucked Hugh’s birthday, leaving me to come alone, and he lied about why. He has never done that before, Dandy.’

I paused to consider the machinations required to run a string of mistresses for upwards of twenty-five years without lying to one’s wife, and paused further to feel grateful for Hugh’s incapacities when it came to subterfuge, then I decided a brisk approach was best.

‘Well then no doubt he is somewhere rather different from where we might expect. Perhaps he’s organising a surprise for you. Or perhaps he wanted to visit a doctor for something embarrassing?’

To my regret, Daisy’s face drained. ‘Oh my heavens!’ she said. ‘That’s it! He’s ill. He might be dying!’

She shot to her feet and made a beeline for the tray of whisky and soda on the opposite sideboard from the coffee things. Rattling the decanter against the edge of a glass, she poured herself a gargantuan measure and, ignoring the siphon, drank it straight down. Then she poured another, even larger, which she brought back. Conversations all around had sunk to that murmur which allows

 for perfect eavesdropping.

Daisy sank down beside me. ‘I’ve known there was something wrong all winter, Dan,’ she said, gasping rather – after another good glug. ‘He’s been preoccupied and peculiar. Of course, I thought some chit had got her claws in too deep for him to shake her off, but I think you’re right.’ She set her empty glass down and sat up very straight before declaiming, ‘Silas is dying!’

‘Oh for heaven’s sake,’ I said. I had only floated the notion to get her to shut up about the other possibility. Only now did it occur to me that presenting an inebriated woman with the means to indulge in melodrama had been misguided in the extreme.

‘I need a drink,’ Daisy declared, as though she had not just had four or five, masquerading as two. She got back to her feet, with less alacrity now, and tacked towards the whisky, saying over her shoulder, ‘My husband is dying, Dandy.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ I said, not even caring that our conversation was enthralling the entire, now silent, drawing room. ‘Why not go to bed, Daisy?’ I urged. ‘It will all look very different in the morning.’

I was right. It certainly did.

Chapter 2

Sunday, 14 May 1939

‘Madam.’ Grant has the perfect voice for a lady’s maid, soft yet penetrating. She has never had to repeat her first salutation to wake me up in the morning and today was no exception, despite the fact that it was still dark and I had been up until well after eleven, first attempting to curb Daisy in the drawing room then, having failed, practically carrying her upstairs. I had not fallen gratefully into my bed until midnight, and had not finally got to sleep until nearer one.

‘Mmmmm?’ said Hugh, groggily, from the pillow beside me.

I opened one eye, hoping to catch Grant smirking, a coarseness I could never scold her for out loud but the knowledge of which, shared between us, would put me in moral credit for months. I should have known better. Grant’s face, shining with night cream and topped by the kind of sleeping bonnet I thought had gone out with marcel waves, was solemn. Was, I thought as I opened the other eye, grave.

‘What time is it?’ I said. Even Bunty, my Dalmatian, had not stirred from her billet at the foot of the bed.

‘Five,’ said Grant. ‘There’s someone on the telephone.’

‘Asking for me?’

‘Urgently.’

Bunty accepted the unwelcome reality before I did. She roused herself like a reluctant shift worker and jumped down. She stretched her front legs by sticking her bottom high in the air and pressing her chest down, stretched her back legs by sticking her chest high in the air and pressing her bottom down, and finally shook herself all over until her ears rattled.

‘Good girl,’ said Grant. ‘That’s the ticket. Madam, where’s your dressing gow— Oh! Where’s your nightgown?’ she amended, as I threw back the blankets. I wriggled into both, shoved my feet into bedroom slippers and followed her downstairs.

I was rarely about at five in the morning, before even maids were stirring, and the stairs and halls of Gilverton seemed most unlike themselves, grey and ghostly, frowsy with a day and a night’s dust and still redolent of tobacco and rich food from the evening before. My feet turned, without bidding, towards my sitting room, but I heard Pallister clear his throat and realised that he was standing, resplendent in a tartan dressing gown and showing peeps of what looked like silk pyjamas, holding the hall telephone.

‘What’s going on?’ I asked him.

‘I hardly—’ Pallister began. It was most unlike him to dither but then I did not know how five in the morning usually finds him.

‘Who am I speaking to?’ I said, taking the instrument out of his hands instead of waiting any longer.

‘Who’s this?’ said a voice, rather peremptorily in my opinion, given that whoever it was had telephoned my house at this ungodly hour of the morning.

‘Mrs Gilver. And you are?’ I said.

‘Ah, Mrs Gilver,’ said the voice. ‘I was put on to you by—’

‘I shan’t ask again,’ I said in the stiffest tone I could summon so many hours before breakfast and after such a late evening. ‘Who are you?’

‘This is the police,’ said the voice, in an injured tone. I glanced at Pallister and mouthed, ‘Police?’ He nodded and I managed not to roll my eyes. Twenty years ago a telephone call from a policeman would have outwitted Pallister’s sangfroid quite handily, but Alec and I have fallen in with them far too often for such squeamishness to be warranted these days.

‘I’m ringing you from Haddington Police Station,’ the voice went on. ‘I was put onto you by the staff—’

‘Haddington, Constable?’ I said.

This slur finally jolted

 a name out of the man. ‘I’m Sgt Dodgson,’ he said. ‘I was put onto you by the staff at Croys. They told me there’s a Mrs Esslemont lodging there?’

‘Lodging isn’t quite—’ I said, then abandoned it; it hardly mattered. ‘Yes, Mrs Esslemont stayed here last night. What’s going on?’

‘And she was there all night?’ Dodgson said.

‘I find that a most extraordinary question, Sgt Dodgson,’ I said. ‘I’m afraid if you won’t tell me what this is about I shall ring off and take it up with the chief constable at nine o’clock.’

This was bluster; I had only the haziest idea where Haddington was – somewhere south of Edinburgh – and not the faintest clue which constabulary it fell under, much less whether I knew the chief constable in question. It worked though.

‘There’s been an accident,’ Dodgson said. ‘A Mr Silas Esslemont has met with a misfortune.’

‘Is he all right?’

‘And there’s a witness, see?’

‘Is he badly hurt?’

‘And all this witness can tell us is—’

‘Which hospital has he been taken to?’ I took the mouthpiece away and said to Grant, ‘Make some tea and tell Drysdale to get the car ready.’ She bustled off.

‘He’s not in a hospital,’ Dodgson was saying as I returned my attention to him.

‘Oh! Good,’ I said. Then something about the quality of his silence made me shiver. ‘Where is he?’

‘Laid out on a board in the back room of a local pub.’ Dodgson said this with rather too much relish for my liking.

‘And what exactly makes you think this unfortunate individual is Mr Esslemont?’ I said. ‘He has no connection with Haddington, as far as I know.’ What I was thinking was that Silas might have exhausted all the female company in Perthshire over the years, but even he was not such a Lothario that he would need to cast his net as far as that.

‘It didn’t happen at Haddington. Do you know Gullane?’

‘Mr Esslemont had no reason to be in Gullane either,’ I said. There was a golf course of some repute there but there are nearer and better at St Andrews.

‘It wasn’t Gullane,’ said Dodgson. ‘Gullane’s just the nearest place you might have heard of. It was Dirleton.’

‘Where?’

‘The village of Dirleton. Charming wee place but off the beaten track. I was helping you situate yourself, Mrs Gilver.’

‘But what makes you connect some poor chap who met with misfortune at Dirleton, by Gullane, near Haddington, with Mr Esslemont of Perthshire?’

‘A letter in his pocket,’ said Dodgson. ‘And a signet ring. It’s Mr Esslemont all right.’

I took a deep breath and let it go again slowly, alarmed to hear how shaky it sounded. Silas, dead? Silas? He did wear rather a prominent ring on his little finger, as it happened. ‘I shall fetch Mrs Esslemont,’ I said. ‘It might take a minute or two though. If you would give my butler here your telephone number, Sgt Dodgson, perhaps we can ring you back. In case the exchange

 cuts us off. They do tend to—’ Then a thought struck me. ‘Hold hard, though. Why did you ask me if Mrs Esslemont was here all night?’

Grant sidled back through the green baize door, looking worried.

‘Well, as I tried to tell you, madam, the witness apprised us of the fact that the assailant—’

‘Assailant?’ I exclaimed. Grant boggled.

‘Assailant, Mrs Gilver. The witness apprised us of the fact that the assailant was a woman.’

‘Still rather a leap to—’ I began.

‘And then the letter too,’ Dodgson said. ‘We ascertained Mr Esslemont’s name from the address on the envelope but we also perused the contents. As part of the investigation, you understand. All perfectly proper.’

‘In this instance, I agree,’ I said. ‘Who was it from? Because whoever that is must surely be your leading suspect.’

‘An excellent question and a sensible deduction, Mrs Gilver,’ Dodgson said. ‘But given the contents, it struck us all – the constable and the surgeon and myself – that Mrs Esslemont certainly had a motive.’

‘Ah,’ I said. ‘How disappointing.’

‘Interesting,’ said Dodgson. ‘You didn’t expostulate, Mrs Gilver. You didn’t give voice to any shock or incredulity.’

He made an excellent point and I kicked myself, not quite internally. At least, Grant noticed something and shot me a quizzical look.

‘As I say, Sergeant,’ I went on, trying for a breezy tone, ‘Mrs Esslemont was here all night. And right now I need to go and tell her this dreadful news.’

‘Or happy news,’ said Dodgson. ‘Given the letter.’

Odious man. ‘Are you married, Sergeant?’ I asked him.

‘To my job,’ he said, pompously in my opinion.

‘Well, in case you ever do marry a woman rather than a job,’ I said, ‘you might be comforted to know in advance that your future widow will mourn you no matter what kind of hand you make at being a husband. I’ll ring back shortly.’

I gave the telephone to Pallister and stamped off upstairs, almost angry enough to forget how dismayed I was. Bunty huddled close in at my heels that way she does when she senses all is not well, and Grant kept pace with both of us.

‘I liked “future widow”,’ she said. ‘Nicely put, madam.’

‘You’ll have gleaned that Silas Esslemont is dead,’ I said. ‘By the hand of a woman, according to some witness they claim to have drummed up. I’m afraid Mrs Esslemont is in for a time of it.’

We were at her door and, with a gentle knock, I entered. I had left her flat on her back in her petticoat, having removed her gown and jewels, and I expected to find her still lying there, or tumbled in a wreck of bedding after the kind of torrid night my sons tell me can sometimes follow such indulgence. To my surprise, however, the bed was empty.

‘Daisy?’ I said stepping over to the dressing room, although I did not see what would

have taken her there. ‘Grant, go and see if she’s in the bathroom. She might be … unwell.’

‘Yes, Becky told me,’ Grant said, and disappeared.

While she was gone, I crossed to the curtains and, withdrawing them and turning to survey the room, I soon found myself hoping against hope that Grant would return with news of Daisy’s misery and a request for a prairie oyster. For not only was my friend nowhere to be seen, but her dressing gown was hanging on the back of the bedroom door and her slippers were tidily tucked under the edge of her dressing table. The gown I had laid over a chair last night had, in contrast, vanished. Her satin shoes likewise were not where I had placed them.

‘No sign,’ said Grant, returning. ‘And that’s not all, I’m afraid. I should have told you immediately, but when I slipped out to ask Drysdale about the car …’

‘What? Spit it out, Grant.’

‘Well, madam, your Cowley’s gone.’

We stared at one another. I broke the silence first. ‘She probably got up early and went home,’ I said.

‘But her chauffeur’s still here,’ said Grant. ‘He shared Drysdale’s room last night. I had to whisper to Drysdale so as not to wake him.’

‘Well, she’s probably …’ I said, giving it my best.

‘Of course,’ said Grant, giving it hers.

Neither one of us, though, was convincing the other nor herself. We stood and regarded one another glumly, trying to find a way to dismiss the facts: that Daisy was angry with Silas, and was drunk, and was gone. And someone had taken my motor car somewhere, in the middle of the night. And Silas had been killed. By a woman.

‘It might not be him, madam,’ Grant said at last. ‘What’s a letter? What’s a ring? And Mrs Esslemont …’ Then her voice ran dry.

‘Would never …’ I managed to add before mine did the same. I felt the horror of it suddenly threaten to overwhelm me and was grateful for Bunty’s worried, wet nose nudging into my hand, forcing my clenched fist to open. ‘Right then,’ I said.

‘Right then,’ Grant agreed.

I had to muster all my acting ability for the good sergeant. I told him that Mrs Esslemont was prostrate with grief and not equal to speaking on the telephone. I suggested that I bring her to Dirleton as soon as she felt up to the journey and thanked him for his time.

‘Very well,’ he said. ‘With any luck he’ll be fit to view by then.’

‘What?’ I said. ‘I certainly didn’t mean to offer her up to fulfil that horrid task. Not a bit of it. I shall bring a friend of the family to take care of identifying Mr Esslemont. I only meant that I was sure you would want to speak to his wife. His widow. And so I shall drive her down there.’ As soon as I find her, I added to myself.

He rumbled a little but, offered an escape from having to drive a police motor car all the way to Perthshire to pick up a widow with – as he

believed – a solid alibi, he accepted.

‘Best pack for overnight,’ I said to Grant as Pallister took the telephone out of my hands. ‘We need to find the baggage and get her down there before the sergeant starts to smell a rat. I’ll stay with her till tomorrow and bring her back again.’

‘And the friend of the family?’ Grant said. ‘Mr Gilver?’

‘Mr Osborne,’ I said. ‘Mr Gilver has guests.’

Pallister cleared his throat. ‘Yes, yes, I know. I have guests too. But Mallory is more than capable of what’s required. And needs must.’

Just then we all turned at the sound of a soft footfall above us. Alec’s head, tousled from sleep, appeared over the banister. ‘What am I being volunteered to do?’ he asked.

‘What are you doing up?’ I said.

‘Telephone bell, hurried footsteps, muttered conversation. Apart from the fact that you’re standing in the hall instead of sitting at your desk, Dandy, I would say there’s a case in the offing. Is there?’

‘I can’t tell you now,’ I said. ‘I’ll howl and wake all the guests. But get ready quickly and I’ll tell every grim detail on the way. Come on, Bunty.’

By seven o’clock, with Hugh informed and taking the news bravely, Alec, Bunty and I were tucked into Alec’s Daimler, the three of us, with warm rolls and a flask of coffee for the journey.

‘Where are we going?’ Alec said.

‘Croys,’ I told him. ‘To fetch Daisy and take her to a little town in East Lothian. I hope.’

‘Why? As a matter of interest. Not that it’s not a lovely day for a long drive. But, you know.’

So, as the mild green morning flashed past the windows, I apprised Alec of events, managing to get through it without my voice cracking. It helped to be telling Alec of all people: high emotion could be driven off by dire embarrassment, it seemed.

He expressed a perfectly proper amount of shock and sorrow at the news of Silas’s death. For it was true indeed that he, through Hugh and me, was a friend of the Esslemonts in the usual way of people with estates in the same county and with shared concerns about weather, crops, and tenants. Besides, Alec is a dear man. If one did not know one would never guess the dark underside of his connection to the Esslemonts, still there all these years later as how could it not be.

For, once upon a time, Alec had been engaged to a sweet girl called Cara Duffy, whom Silas had ruined when she was not much more than a child. She died at another’s hand, owing to the scandal, and her death was Alec’s introduction to me, the reason we embarked on our first case together as we tried to solve her murder. It

was the very genesis of Gilver and Osborne. Understandably, we do not discuss any of this. Yet more understandably, there has never been love lost between the two men.

‘Is there a suspect?’ Alec asked.

‘It was a woman who did it,’ I said. ‘Or so the police have been told.’

‘Well, it would be,’ Alec said. ‘Or a husband of a woman.’ He paused. ‘“Been told”? There was a witness then?’

‘Apparently so.’

‘And now poor Daisy has to go and collect his body from some godforsaken place in the middle of nowhere? How awful for her.’

‘I certainly hope that that’s all the awfulness she has in store.’

‘What do you mean?’ Alec said. He swung the motor car round a particularly vicious bend. The Gilverton road is a beast of thing. Not that the main road we were hurtling towards was much better.

‘I mean, I certainly hope she’s at Croys to be fetched.’

‘Yes, I wondered about that,’ said Alec. ‘Why did she go home so early? Oh God, not sheep!’ We had rounded another corner to be greeted by the sight of a woolly grey river filling the roadway before us. ‘Why are they moving sheep, Dan? Lambing is done and there can’t be a lowland field eaten down already. It’s May. Is Hugh moving them up?’

‘I neither know nor care,’ I said, nodding at the shepherd as he passed the car, deep in his flock. I could not see how the man kept on his feet, carried along as he was by the solid mass of animals surrounding him. Alec winced as his paintwork took the brunt of a horn. The only happy soul was Bunty, standing with her head out of the back window and her whole body wagging from the joy of this entertainment. ‘The thing is,’ I said, ‘the police at Dirleton or Gullane or Haddington rang Croys – as they would. Ugh, I will never get used to that smell. I’m sure English sheep don’t pong so much. And whoever answered the telephone there said she was here. As they would too. Because she was. But the thing is … she borrowed my Cowley sometime in the night and took off. She must have slipped into her house without the staff there noticing.’

Alec was silent for a while and then he said, ‘That’s certainly one possibility.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘She wasn’t feeling very well at bedtime last night. And, with the prospect of not feeling very well again this morning, I assume she wanted to go home and sleep in her own bed.’

‘I can’t agree with you there,’ said Alec. ‘She seemed extremely well when I last saw her yesterday. Full of merriment.’

‘Don’t be cruel, Alec. That wasn’t merriment. She was drowning her sorrows.’

‘Good Lord, how many ewes are there? No wonder they’ve stripped whatever field they’ve been in. I don’t approve of these enormous flocks. It’s like something from Russia!’

It didn’t help that the shepherd was now bellowing for his dog, apparently lost somewhere in the midst of its charges, nowhere to be seen.

‘Anyway, what sorrows?’ Alec said. ‘She always seemed quite reconciled to Silas being Silas. What sorrows would cause her to steal a car and drive home, even though her own car and her own chauffeur were right there?’

I said nothing.

‘While her husband’s being put to death by an unknown woman?’

‘At last!’ I said, as the flock thinned and the last few ewes plodded past us. Despite my claim that I had no interest in Hugh’s pursuits, I was glad to see that the stragglers straggled only because in any crowd someone has to be last, not because they were limping or gasping for breath. I do hate to see a creature struggle with its existence and Hugh has no time for such poor husbandry either. Even Alec looked with an interested eye and gave a satisfied nod.

‘Fine beasts,’ he said. ‘They deserve a better dog, frankly.’

For the shepherd was still berating his missing helper at the top of his lungs.

‘I’ve never heard Hugh mention it,’ I said. ‘And you know how he feels about ill-trained dogs. Not you, darling,’ I said, reaching back to fondle Bunty’s ears.

‘But to return to Daisy,’ said Alec. ‘Be honest. If this were an ordinary case instead of a friend, you’d think the story far more simple. You wouldn’t be trying so desperately to cast two parts: the missing woman and the female assailant. I’m not. I’m quite happy to conclude that Daisy had a very good reason not to take her own car and driver on her trip last night.’

I could not bring myself to pooh-pooh it. Instead I sat under a blanket of helpless misery and let it crush me. After a moment, though, a thought occurred. ‘But, Alec, why on earth would Daisy choose an evening when she was in Perthshire and Silas was practically down at the English border, instead of one of the endless evenings they spend together at home?’

‘Hardly endless,’ Alec said. ‘Which is rather the point of the matter, wouldn’t you say?’

‘She couldn’t have made herself look more suspicious if she tried,’ I persisted.

‘Yes but she must have meant to get back here before the household was up,’ said Alec. ‘She’s probably coming round the next bend, just about to crash into my bumper.’

He spoke in jest but I felt myself stiffening in my seat anyway and it was this that allowed me to see over the hedgerow hummock at the side of the lane, where a flash of black and white down the steep bank caught my eye.

‘Hmph,’ I said. ‘That shepherd’s dog has abandoned his post and gone rabbiting.’

‘Doesn’t sound like any sheepdog I know,’ Alec said. ‘Are you sure? Maybe it’s injured.’

He is terribly sentimental about dogs, and he was slowing even as he spoke, pulling over to the edge of the lane and craning his neck to see.

‘Oh my God, Dandy!’ he said and wrenched open the door, throwing himself out and clambering over the lip of the bank, ignoring the brambles that tore at him and the thick mud that instantly caked his shoes.

‘What the devil?’ I said, getting out and standing on the running board to get a better view. A view that sent me scrambling after him

It was the dog, a typical scrawny little Border collie, thin as a whip, and it was working harder than ever it had with a flock of sheep, I would wager. For it had seen or smelled or sensed something wrong as it passed this spot, and it was trying to right matters.

Far down the bank, almost at the burn that bubbled along the bottom of the cut, my little Morris Cowley sat with its crumpled nose hard against a sturdy beech tree and its wheels jammed up with mud and bracken from its long slide. The dog was digging its back legs in and tugging at something dark, just outside the open driver’s door.

Alec, with no thought to his safety, launched himself down the bank, skidding and stumbling, and – arriving beside the dog – grabbed it by the scruff and hauled it away. Then I saw what it had been hiding from sight. It wasn’t all dark, although most of it was soaked through and coated with mud. There was a pale arm, and a white face, and even the dress still showed some of the oyster-coloured silk among the smears of filth.

‘She’s breathing!’ Alec shouted. ‘Oh thank God! Dandy, she’s alive! I thought the dog was— But he was rescuing her. Trying to.’

Beside me Bunty whined, confused and upset by this strange tableau. ‘What should I do?’ I called down. ‘Can we haul her up together, between the two of us?’

‘No chance!’ Alec called back. ‘Go to the house and telephone for help.’

‘The— The doctor?’

‘And the police,’ Alec said.

‘But—’

He turned away from her then and stared up at me, narrowing his eyes and shaking his head slightly, as though in disbelief. ‘Look at the marks, Dandy. Look at the bank.’

I did not need to, for I had seen them immediately upon climbing out of the motor car. My Cowley was facing straight downhill, but it had left the lane a little further on than we had got to and had slid and tumbled on an unmistakably diagonal path to where it lay. Daisy had been returning to Gilverton.

‘Right,’ I said. ‘Yes, of course.’ I had no real choice in the matter, I reluctantly concluded. Besides, we could not hide an injured woman who had crashed a motor car, the way I had hoped to hide a missing woman who had merely borrowed one, no matter that Silas’s murder would now be solved almost before the case was opened. Daisy, drunk and angry, had driven away in the night, committed an unspeakable crime, and tried to return without anyone knowing she had gone. She almost made it but for our treacherous road, or perhaps her exhaustion, or her shock at what she had done when she viewed it with dawn’s sobriety. Now her life was over, as surely as was Silas’s, and her daughters’ lives too.

I made my sorry way back to the motor car to set in motion the saddest course of action I had ever known.

Chapter 3

Not to be callous, but one silver lining was the breaking up of our house party. Hugh’s pals and their wives began to melt away immediately after breakfast, murmuring about this and that: prior engagements suddenly recalled; duties they had hoped to ignore that were pricking consciences after all; even a claim to be starting a cold, which came complete with a few desultory and unconvincing sniffles. No one was fooled but no one demurred. ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Lucky you remembered. Good of you to make the sacrifice. Best at home with a hot toddy.’ Then, when the door closed on the last of them, I trailed to the library where Hugh and Alec sat sunk in gloom. Alec is no longer counted as a guest at Gilverton. When the company shrinks to just the three of us, we feel quite as though we are in the family circle.

Of course, this morning, the company also included Daisy, lying upstairs unconscious, a broken arm and a broken leg both hastily plastered, a grievous wound to the back of her head bathed and bandaged and left to chance, for there was nothing more than that to be done. So said the nurse summoned from the hospital at Perth, who was also swelling our number but so discreetly she did not intrude.

The household was completed by a doughty police matron, far less discreet, who had taken up her post inside the bedroom door, staring stonily at the patient and refusing all offers of tea, breakfast, or even a newspaper to while the time away. She had roused herself a little when I visited Daisy’s bedside, as though I might abet some plan for escape and it was her job to foil me; not at all as though the prisoner was sleeping like a fairy-tale princess, oblivious of her plight and as likely to flee as was the feather bed in which she lay. I took Daisy’s hand and gazed at her, but was not minded to speak to my old friend with the police matron listening. After a while, I conveyed thanks to the woman – who was, after all, only doing her duty – by means of a tight smile, and left them.

‘Where’s Ted?’ I asked, dropping into an armchair and welcoming its embrace. Hugh’s part of the house is not stylish, for he has resisted all attempts to redecorate these last twenty years at least, but he does himself very well for creature comforts, as all men do. Bunty laid her head on my lap and gave a long groan, which summed up the mood of the room beautifully.

‘Gone to back to Benachally with Donald and Mallory,’ said Hugh, sounding rather bleak. ‘And taken Miss Cartaright with him.’

‘Poor thing,’ I said. ‘I hope this doesn’t put her off.’ I imagined her writing or telephoning to her mother to report on the momentous occasion. Oh yes, lovely people, Mummy. One of their friends is a murderess, but apart from that, you know.

‘She seemed quite sanguine about it all when she made her goodbyes,’ said Hugh. ‘Sensible girl.’ It is his highest praise for any female and the thought seemed to have cheered him up a little. ‘Mind you,’ he went on. ‘I would have said the same about Daisy before today.’

‘I can’t bring myself to believe it,’ I said. ‘I keep going over and over it, round and round. All I can come up with is that, if she did do it, it was only because she had some kind of brainstorm.’

Alec wrinkled his nose and gave a hefty sigh. ‘The trouble with that,’ he said, ‘is that what she did – if she did it – was clearly premeditated.’

‘How so?’ said Hugh. ‘I don’t see that at all, old chap. She was stewing about yet another indiscretion, angry that he left her to walk into a party unaccompanied – which is shabby behaviour, in anyone’s book.’

Despite my deep sadness and wretched exhaustion, that raised a smile in me. How

 typical of Hugh to find a lapse in manners shabbier than decades of infidelity.

‘Then the major rubbed her nose in it. Oh yes, it’s all come out, Dandy. She got as drunk as a lord and decided she’d had it.’ Hugh huffed out a sigh. ‘Or perhaps she only meant to confront him and things got out of hand. Do we know how he died?’

‘The sergeant didn’t say,’ I told him. ‘But we’ll soon get a chance to ask him. He’s on his way from Dirleton now, according to Pallister. Poor Pallister. Every time he thinks he has digested the worst that life will ever bring him, it serves up more.’ I puffed out my cheeks and let a long breath go, hoping it would take some of the misery with it as it left me. ‘But I must admit I don’t follow either, Alec. What sets you against a “moment of madness”? Except for the two hours’ drive.’

‘More like three,’ said Hugh. ‘In that little motor car, in the dark.’

‘Simply this,’ Alec said. ‘How did she know where to go?’ He sat back and let the question sink into us, let us try and fail to find an answer. ‘She said he was at a dinner for a Perthshire regiment. If she believed that, she would hardly have gone to Dirleton to find him. If she didn’t believe it, then she chose to lie to you, Dandy. In either case, she laid a false scent quite deliberately. Do you see?’

‘But wouldn’t she have abandoned her plan when the major scuppered her story?’ I said.

‘Perhaps she did,’ said Hugh. ‘Then she got drunk in her disappointment or – let’s be generous – relief, and the drink muddled her judgement until, not thinking clearly, she set off after all.’

It made depressingly good sense and it sent all three of us into renewed silent glumness. I do not know what thoughts filled the men’s heads, but for myself I was borne back into the long ago, when Daisy and I were young, when life was fresh and plump and just about to fall into our outstretched hands, when the Great War already on the distant horizon had not entered our empty heads, much less another in its wake such as we were facing now. For one moment, I wondered if perhaps it would be best for Daisy to slip away and never face the shame and misery awaiting her should she recover. Then, as though to slap me back to common sense and simple kindness, came a loud rap on the front door.

‘Copper’s knock,’ Alec said. ‘Here we go then.’

If ever there was a sign that the East Lothian constabulary had Daisy and Daisy alone in its sights, it was surely the fact that not only was Sgt Dodgson ushered into the library moments later, but that he had with him a certain Captain Wicks, whom Hugh recognised with a flare of eye and nostril even before introductions had been made, for Captain Wicks was the chief constable of the county. They had abandoned the corpse, the scene of the crime, the witness already found and those who might still be in the offing, and had descended on Gilverton, where lay the suspected, accused, tried and convicted Daisy, for the taking.

Pallister was dispatched to fetch the hospital nurse and, while we waited, we tried to glean what we could about the murder.

‘Now then, my dear fellows,’ Hugh said, with a great air of taking charge. ‘What

makes you think that the corpse you found is my old friend Silas Esslemont?’

Alec and I shared a guilty look. Was it possible that we had not told Hugh about the letter? It was.

‘Letter in his pocket addressed to him,’ said Sgt Dodgson, ‘and his initials on his ring.’

‘How exactly did he die?’ I asked. Both men stared back at me with lips sealed. ‘Unless it’s grisly,’ I added. ‘He is an old friend and I’d rather not know the details if they’re dreadful.’

Alec smirked. He knows me. These policemen did not.

‘His head was bashed in,’ said Sgt Dodgson, probably believing he was teaching me a valuable lesson: to wit, do not ask a question if the answer is going to be unwelcome.

‘Have a care,’ the chief constable put in mildly. He did not strike me as a thrusting sort.

‘At Dirleton?’ I said. ‘Where? In someone’s house? Surely not in a public place?’ I had shaken out an answer with a display of feminine squeamishness he did not know was feigned. Now I hoped to do the same again, this time employing that distaste for spectacle, that yearning for respectability, by which the middle classes – including policemen – set such store.

‘Right there on the village green for all the world to see,’ the sergeant said. I was beginning to get the measure of him and I did not care for it greatly.

‘I say,’ was all the chief constable now offered.

‘“The world” consisting of a single witness, I think you told me, Sergeant?’ was what I said next.

‘One witness is plenty,’ came the reply, ‘when we have a suspect in … Well, not custody but safely in hand.’

I gave him a cold stare. “Safely in hand” was an extremely unpleasant way to refer to the fact that poor Daisy was lying in her bed of pain with a police matron monitoring her every breath. ‘Why on earth do you imagine that Mrs Esslemont would harm her husband?’ I said.

‘The letter in his pocket was short and to the point,’ said Dodgson.

‘I have no wish to hear—’ I began.

And so of course he told me. If I had asked to hear he would have taken it to his grave. “Come to me,” he said. ‘That was the whole of the message. “Come to me”. And it was signed “One you have wronged”.’

‘Strikes me you should be looking for whoever that is,’ Alec said.

‘Thank you very much, sir, but we don’t need any assistance,’ said Dodgson.

‘Although we are a man down, as it happens,’ Captain Wicks piped up. ‘The inspector – a very capable fellow – is on his holiday. Fishing in the Dee, I believe. That’s why I’ve stepped in in such an active capacity.’

His claim to be “active” was at such odds with the evidence before our eyes that it was hard not to snort. And I was sure Dodgson’s jaw was clenched with resentment as he repeated, ‘We don’t need outside help. We have our suspect in hand.’

‘In hand but in no fit state to be interviewed,’ Alec said, addressing his remark to the chief constable. ‘I hope that was made clear to you before you decided to drive all this way.’

‘Oh, so you’ve been

in her bedroom, have you?’ said Dodgson.

Such a nasty remark shook a response that was almost forceful out of Captain Wicks. ‘Now, now,’ he said.

Hugh had been silent but, at this fresh outrage and in the absence of anything approaching discipline in the chain of command, he piped up. ‘Keep a civil tongue in your head when referring to Mrs Esslemont, please. And when speaking in the presence of my wife, for that matter. There’s a good chap.’

I would not have trusted myself to say anything, for there was a rage bubbling in me as though I were a cauldron over a fire. How dare this jumped-up little nobody of a sergeant insult Daisy, and Alec too for that matter, while lounging uninvited in my library. I had a good mind to tell Silas, I thought. He might be a bit of a Don Juan but he was as ready as the next man to defend his wife’s honour and he would knock Dodgson’s block off for that partic—

Then my roiling thoughts snagged on a sudden realisation of the dreadful new truth: the truth we would all have to live with, every day, for the rest of our lives. I felt tears – finally; hours after the first glimpse of the sheepdog! – begin to gather in my eyes.

‘Please excuse me,’ I said, rather huskily, and I hurried from the room.

Daisy lay exactly as she had lain all morning, her face as white as the bandage around her head, her broken arm slung from a length of tape thrown over the bed frame, her broken leg suspended from another and her breath coming in rasping groans from her sleep-slackened throat.

‘Ah, Mrs Gilver,’ said the police matron. ‘The nurse is away to talk to the detectives.’

‘Detectives!’ I could not help exclaiming, although it was true that both men wore plain clothes. ‘I didn’t come to speak to the nurse anyway,’ I added. In truth, I did not know why I had come.

‘No, no, it’s just I might need to step aside a minute,’ she explained. ‘If you would stay awhile?’

I am not cruel and so I nodded my assent. But I am only human and, unfairly – for it was her colleagues downstairs I was angry with – I refused to offer the information I felt sure her remark had been intended to shake out of me. Instead, I left her to wander the passageways in search of a lavatory, or a servant who would help her. Once she was gone, I sat down on the edge of Daisy’s bed and picked up her hand. It was warm but otherwise utterly lifeless.

I remembered, however, what I had heard from one of the soldiers in the convalescent

home during the war. I had played cards with him, quiet games of whist until he finished whittling himself a cribbage board and then contests more bitter than I had ever known in a bridge four. While the cards were dealt one day, he told me he had been unconscious for a week after the shelling but had heard every word spoken near him. ‘I knew my legs were gone,’ he told me. ‘I knew my fiancée wept and wailed to her mother about the chore of taking care of me for the rest of my life, even though she put on an act for the doctors. I didn’t miss a thing.’

‘Ugh,’ I said. ‘What a good thing you found out her true colours.’

He shook his head and smiled ruefully as if to say he did not blame her. He did not need to; I blamed her enough for us both.

And I never forgot him. Now, sitting by Daisy’s bed, I spoke to her because of what he had told me. It felt foolish and I was glad no one else was there to hear, but I did it just the same. ‘Thank goodness Hugh wouldn’t let me get rid of these old four-posters,’ I said. ‘This one has come in terrifically handy, hasn’t it? For “traction”, I seem to recall is its name. It looks awfully uncomfy though, darling. I do hope you’re not getting pins and needles.’

Daisy breathed in and out.

‘Now, I’m afraid you’re going to have a couple of rather dreary guests any minute now,’ I went on. ‘A Sgt Dodgson – quite a rotter, if you ask me – and a soaking wet blanket of a so-called chief constable who must be someone’s nephew; there’s no other explanation for it. They’re coming to see you unless the nurse heads them off. She seemed like a kind sort. I do hope so.’

I watched Daisy’s chest rise and fall for a moment.

‘Oh darling,’ I said next. ‘What on earth were you thinking? After all these years?’

I remembered Daisy and Silas’s wedding as though it were yesterday: the tightness and scratchiness of my headdress; the interminable speeches; the way she gazed up at him in frank adoration; the amused look on his face as he glanced down at her. I was as innocent as she in those days. Now, I would know what it meant to see a bridegroom mildly entertained by his bride’s devotion on the big day. If I had seen it on Donald’s face I would have boxed his ears and told Mallory to run away. If I saw it on Teddy’s during his engagement, I would take Dolly aside and suggest she keep looking. But Daisy, or so I thought, had accepted the facts of her life years ago. I was mystified, truly.

I was also apparently wool-gathering. At least, I jumped as if poked in the ribs at a sudden movement beside me. Daisy’s eyes were open!

‘Dan?’ she said, in a rusty squeak.

‘Darling!’ I said. I shot to my feet, looking wildly about myself, even though I knew the nurse was downstairs with the policemen. I sat down again and took up her hand, rubbing it desperately. ‘Lie still, Daisy,’ I said. ‘You’ve hurt your head. Oh my dear, I thought—’

‘Hurts,’ Daisy said. It came out like a growl.

‘I know, I know,’ I said. ‘I’ll get the nurse to give you some morphine. She won’t be long.’

‘Silas,’ Daisy croaked.

‘Ssshh,’ I said. ‘Don’t try to speak any more just now. There’s a good girl.’

‘Want Silas,’ said Daisy.

 in a sort of fading whisper.

‘Shush,’ I said, hopelessly. I could not tell whether she was wailing in remorse and regret for what she had done or if the blow to her head had wiped out the memory of doing it, and I did not know which was worse. I closed my eyes, praying silently, although I knew not what for.

‘Dandy.’ My eyes flew open. Her voice was louder, with perhaps a little more strength behind it. ‘Where is Silas?’ she said, and then she let a long breath go, as though the effort to speak had exhausted her anew. Her eyelids fluttered but she screwed her face up and managed to keep looking at me.

I stared back. She had to be in tremendous pain, but her gaze was determined and her eyes looked clear and were focused upon me. I had experienced the unsettling sight of a man with one pupil enormous and one tiny. I had seen soldiers’ faces blurred by their broken minds. Daisy looked exactly the same as her old self, except for the bandage.

‘Darling,’ I said. ‘Silas died.’ I felt the jerk as she gripped my hand in a sudden spasm. ‘Darling,’ I said again. ‘They think you killed him. At Dirleton.’

I had thought her face was as white as milk already but upon hearing these words it paled yet further until she looked in tone and texture exactly like a tallow candle. And the shock of the news really had depleted whatever little store of strength she had managed to find. Her eyelids drifted down and her grip on my hand slackened. I watched, with held breath, until I saw her chest rise and fall in steady time once or twice, then I turned as the door began to open.

‘Hirl—’ Daisy said, the merest trace of a murmur, and the police matron was back in the room.

‘The men are at my back,’ she said. ‘The nurse is bringing them.’ It seemed she had gone on quite an expedition through my house then. I wished I had directed her to the nearest lavatory after all. I said nothing. I simply looked at Daisy and then back at the matron.

‘I don’t think Mrs Esslemont is equal to answering questions,’ I said.

The police matron bristled. ‘I’m perfectly well aware that the prisoner is unconscious, madam,’ she said.

‘There is no prisoner here, my good woman.’

‘But naturally the sergeant and the chief constable need to see it for themselves.’

I opened my mouth to say more. I was not aware then nor could I make a statement under oath now regarding what I was about to say and, in any case, I was prevented. Subtly but undeniably, Daisy squeezed my hand. I glanced at her face and this I could swear to: there

was the tiniest little frown line showing between her brows. I squeezed back and the line cleared as I watched it.

Then I patted her hand and stood. ‘Very well,’ I said. ‘If two policemen find it worth their while to stand at the bedside of a patient in a coma, who am I to argue?’

I swept out. Halfway down the stairs, I met Dodgson and Wicks, tramping upwards still in their overcoats, although they had left their hats somewhere at least. The nurse brought up the rear and, although I would have said I have a pretty decent poker face, she grabbed my arm as I plodded past, and asked me softly: ‘What is it?’

I boggled at her. ‘What do you mean?’

‘What’s happened?’

‘What’s happened?’ I echoed, reminding myself of my sons when they were small, playing for time when I had caught them in naughtiness. ‘Well, my friend is at death’s door and has just been made a widow. And my house is full of policemen.’

She let my arm go and I hoped I was imagining the shrewd look she gave me as she hurried away.

Back in the library, I considered sharing the news with both menfolk. The trouble is that Hugh, most sturdy and dependable Hugh, has a very straightforward view of some things, including the law of the land, which is not always helpful in the kinds of predicaments where Alec and I often find ourselves. Reasoning that Daisy was my only business here, I had just about decided to say nothing to him when a discreet cough in the library doorway announced the presence of his factor, estate manager and great friend.

‘Hardly the moment, sir,’ he said in that perfectly judged tone somewhere between business-like assertiveness and old-school deference, ‘but we had a plan to discuss the Hendr—’

‘Good Lord, the Hendrys!’ said Hugh, leaping to his feet. ‘Are they here?’

‘Sitting in the estate office with all the paperwork in order.’

‘If you’ll excuse me, Dandy,’ Hugh said giving me a slight bow. ‘I’m doing no good lounging about and this business has been months in the preparation.’

I inclined my head and Hugh all but broke into a trot making his escape.

‘What’s going on with the Hendrys?’ said Alec, when he was gone. He is just like Hugh sometimes, with a distressing tendency to care about the minutiae of tenants and policies.

‘Do you know them?’ I asked, rather brusquely perhaps.

‘One of their older daughters is being trained up as a parlourmaid,’ said Alec. ‘Barrow tells me she’s excellent.’

I smiled at him. He is nothing like Hugh, who just about knows Becky’s name after all these years but is proof against all knowledge that maids are trained on the job.

‘And now that we’re alone …’ said Alec, ‘what is it you need to say, Dandy? You know, before you burst.’

‘Don’t be vulgar,’ I said, annoyed to discover that Alec, like the nurse, had seen through my attempts to calm myself and appear normal. ‘If you must know … Promise me I can speak in confidence, Alec.’

‘As ever,’ he said gravely. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Daisy woke up,’ I said. ‘That galumph went to visit the lav. And Daisy woke up and talked to me.’

‘Good grief!’ said Alec. ‘Why did you let the coppers in? She should have a solicitor

 with her if she’s awake again.’

‘She’s not,’ I said. ‘Well, that’s to say, I think she is. But she closed her eyes when the police matron came back and she squeezed my hand to make me button my lip. She looks exactly the same as she did before. She’ll be fine. Unless she sneezes, I suppose.’

‘What did she say?’ Alec asked. ‘Did she confess? If she’s faking unconsciousness, Dandy …’

‘This is exactly why I wouldn’t tell Hugh,’ I said. ‘Of course she didn’t confess. Alec, that’s the thing: she didn’t know. She didn’t know Silas is dead.’

‘Are you sure? What did she say?

‘Groans and moans at first. I think she’s in great pain. It’s heartbreaking. And then she called for Silas, several times.’

‘What did you tell her?’

I put my hand over my mouth. ‘I might never forgive myself for how I blurted it out. I told her Silas had died. And I swear she didn’t know. It came as a complete shock. She blanched and almost swooned. She didn’t know. I’m sure of it. And when I told her everyone thought she had done it, she …’

‘She what?’

‘She said something very indistinct. I think she was trying to tell me something.’

‘Indistinct but sounding like what?’ Alec said.

‘I heard “hirl”,’ I told him. ‘Or “earl”, possibly. Very guttural.’

‘Did either make sense in the context?’

I screwed my face up trying to remember. ‘I had just said that Silas had died, at Dirleton, and everyone thought she did it.’

‘Well, there you are then,’ said Alec. ‘She was repeating “Dirleton”, or trying to. Dirleton is the most puzzling bit of the whole thing, when you think about it, Dandy. What’s a tiny town in a distant county got to do with Silas Esslemont?’

‘Well, there you are then,’ I shot back, rudely I suppose. ‘If Daisy did it, she’d hardly be surprised to hear where it was done, would she? She’s far too ill to pull off an innocent act.’

‘Just ill enough to pull off an even more ill act?’ said Alec. ‘Faking a coma?’

‘Jolly sensible, if you ask me,’ I told him. ‘If she can keep it up, it gives us some time.’

‘Us who?’ said Alec. ‘Us, Gilver and Osborne?’

‘Who else?’

‘It might have been us, the dear friends of Daisy and pals of Silas.’ He gave me a very even stare.

‘In which case you would leave it to me and take yourself off to deal with other concerns?’

‘I’m only human,’ Alec said. ‘Even professionally, where I grant you my private feelings shouldn’t come into it, if Silas were suspected of murdering Daisy, I shouldn’t lift a finger. I hated the man, Dandy.’

I tried not to look startled. He had never said anything even approaching that in all

 the years since Cara died. ‘As it stands though?’ I asked him.

‘Who’s paying us?’ said Alec, in a very different voice.

‘Well, Daisy,’ I said. ‘Presumably. When she’s better.’

‘Ah,’ said Alec. ‘I don’t believe we’ve ever presumed payment before, have we?’

‘Come on, Alec,’ I said.

‘I’m teasing you,’ he replied. ‘I like Daisy and feel a great deal of sympathy for her, no matter what she’s done. Of course I’ll help.’

I stared at him. ‘But Gilver and Osborne, darling,’ I said. ‘Servants of truth. Not agents of revenge.’

‘We’ll see,’ said Alec mildly.

‘Oh for God’s sake!’ I burst out. ‘Stop being so wry and detached. I know you don’t – can’t possibly – care that Silas is dead. In fact, you should be glad you’ve got an alibi. But you said yourself you care about Daisy. And you care about justice, don’t you?’

‘That’s a thought,’ Alec said, with his eyes suddenly very wide. ‘My alibi is that I was asleep alone in a room all night and I haven’t touched a hair on his head all these years so far. Rather flimsy, which gives me good reason to sort this out. Because I certainly care about my own neck.’ He sighed. ‘And Daisy’s too.’

‘Well, we’d better not leave it up to those policemen to save either.’

‘I’m sorry, Dandy,’ Alec told me. ‘I’m not really detached, as you put it. Only, I find myself in the grip of a perfect maelstrom of unpleasant thoughts.’

‘Feelings,’ I said, knowing that this was immeasurably worse.

‘Feelings,’ Alec agreed sheepishly. ‘Working hard on a case is the perfect distraction. To Dirleton we shall go!’...